Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

What’s Wrong with the World
is dedicated to the defense of
what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of
the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the
Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Four approaches to teleology

Comments (1)

The materialist, who corresponds to Shields’ teleological eliminativist, denies teleology. The Platonic teleologist, like the teleological intentionalist, affirms teleology but regards it as imposed by a divine intelligence from outside (e.g. by the demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus). The Aristotelian teleologist also affirms teleology but regards it as immanent to the natural order rather than imposed from outside. As Ariew notes, William Paley of “design argument” fame and contemporary Intelligent Design theorists are essentially Platonic teleologists.

I’ll stipulate that William Paley and the Intelligent Design theorists are Platonic teleologists; and that Platonic teleology is opposed to Aristotelian teleology. It does not follow from this, however, that the “design argument” is essentially opposed to either Thomistic or Aristotelian teleology; for the simple fact is that the design argument is not a competing teleology at all, but, as its name says, an “argument” by which only one position is threatened, the “teleological eliminavist” position.

If, while employing this argument, the IDers make anti-Aristotelian assumptions, this is only because it is an argumentum ad hominem which concedes to the eliminavists the latter’s worldview in order to make the argument more cogent.

Post a comment

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If
your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same
comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.

Reverse the order of the digits in 31, then type the answer using letters instead of numbers, all lower case. (required):